


Unlikely Situations

by 2by4



Series: Infallible Heroes [8]
Category: Batman (Comics), Red Robin (Comics)
Genre: Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Gen, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-17
Updated: 2017-07-07
Packaged: 2018-11-15 08:53:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,708
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11227560
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/2by4/pseuds/2by4
Summary: So I've officially unabandoned this series, but updates will be slow coming.





	1. Chapter 1

“Damian needed it,” Dick said as if that excused it all. And maybe, to him, it did. He wasn’t the one who’d made the promise to Tim after all. He’d moved on from being Robin with only minimal struggle and he probably didn’t see why Tim would choose to cling to it. 

“It was not your place to make that decision.”

“The hell it wasn’t. Robin is my name and flies under my family’s colors. It wasn’t your place to promise it to Tim forever.”

“Robin stopped being yours when it became a symbol. Robin belongs to Gotham City and to Tim. And not just because I promised it to him. Tim  _ earned _ Robin. He worked harder than any of you to get that tunic. Even when we were telling him to give up, he kept working at it. He deserved it.”

“Damian needed it,” Dick repeated. “He needed to shoulder the weight of that  _ symbol _ . He’d just lost his father. He needed the direction being Robin could give him.”

“Tim had just lost his mate, after losing his best friends, and his father. Robin was all he had left. He needed that familiarity.”

“Bruce, you left me alone to look after your son. You don’t get to come back and judge the way I handled things.”

“I’m not saying you didn’t do a good job with Damian. I’m not saying I don’t appreciate all you sacrificed in my absence. I’m not saying you didn’t do the best you could with the hand you were dealt. I’m saying that in this one thing, you chose wrong. You’re right that Damian needed a symbol, to be a part of the Batman legacy and learn the weight it carried, but why did it have to be Robin? With you as Batman, the Nightwing name was available. Why not offer that to him instead?”

“Damian needed Robin. For the same reason I couldn’t just give him his own identity, giving him Nightwing wouldn’t have been enough. He needed to be Robin. He needed it the same way I needed it, the way Jason and Tim and Stephanie had all needed it. He needed it because we all had carried it first. Besides, Nightwing isn’t Batman’s partner the same way Robin is. I created Nightwing to be it’s own entity; to stand on it’s own as Batman’s equal, not his sidekick.”

“So why not offer Nightwing to Tim then? You said you took Robin from him because you saw him as an equal, why not offer him the role you just said was Batman’s equal?”

“Because…”

“Because Nightwing is yours, right? With me gone and life as you knew it changed forever, you held onto Nightwing because it was all you had left. Even while being Batman, you held onto Nightwing because you needed that sense of stability it gave you. You needed the possibility of going back to it, no matter how unlikely it was while I was dead. You clung to Nightwing because Nightwing defines you. Just like Tim clung to Robin.”

Dick frowns but says firmly. “I still stand by my decision. Damian needed to be Robin. He needed to know that even with you not here, he’s still part of this family. Giving him Robin was all I could do to express that.”

“And what did you give Tim so he could know it, too? What consolation was offered to Tim to let him know that even if he’s not Batman’s mate, he’s still part of the family? Because you know him. You know his childhood. You know his loss. You know how isolated and abandoned he can feel. So what did you give him?”

“I…” Dick tried.

“Nothing,” Bruce interrupted. “You gave him nothing. Not only did you offer him nothing to let him know he was still family, you didn’t even protect him from Damian’s vitriol. You let Damian tell him he didn’t belong here and let him drive Tim away.”

“It was not my responsibility to play peacekeeper between your mate and your son,” Dick says, but there’s not heat in his words.

“No, but looking out for your little brothers was your responsibility.” 

Dick just seemed to deflate; slumped over in his chair, arms hanging loosely between his knees. “So, what, you’re just going to take it away from him now. After all the work he’s put into it? Sure, Robin doesn’t mean the same to Damian as it did to Tim, but…”

“No,” Bruce interrupted. “Robin is Damian’s now. He earned it. And you were right about one thing at least, Tim is Batman’s equal. And as much lip service I paid to him being my partner and not my sidekick, I never would have really meant that with him as Robin. It was time for Tim to move on from Robin, I just wished you’d handled it better.”


	2. Chapter 2

Tim knows Damian is there long before the boy actively decides to make him presence known, because as sneaky as Damian thinks he is, he’s still only eleven years old and would have to get up a lot earlier in the morning to get one over on Tim. Also, there are proximity alarms in play, but that’s irrelevant.

Damian has been basically stalking Tim for about a week now. He’s shown up on every one of Tim’s patrol and just lurked in the background mostly, only occasionally joining in on a fight, and never actually saying anything. He’d shown up at Wayne Enterprises and seated himself in the corner of Tim’s office and glared at everyone who visited. But this is the first time he’d popped up in Tim’s apartment.

“Have you eaten?” Tim asks the empty kitchen, already pulling out more eggs and the ingredients for a veggie omelet because, chances were, Damian considered infiltrating Tim’s apartment to be a top secret mission and so had snuck out of the manor before anyone noticed he was awake, foregoing breakfast in the act. (Tim couldn’t count the number of times Tim himself had skipped dinner to get a headstart on tracking Batman and Robin back when  _ he’d _ been eleven years old.) And, well letting the kid starve wouldn’t win him any favors.

Damian says nothing, but there’s a faint shuffling sound coming from inside the cabinet where the kid is hiding.

Tim hums to himself as he cooks Damian’s omelet: spinach, bell peppers, mushrooms, and cheese. The meal isn’t as fancy as something Alfred would make, but it wouldn’t poison anyone either. Tim’s own omelet is made with four eggs and contains as many kinds of meat as it does vegetables. He probably won’t eat it all, but he’s trying to gain weight so he’s making himself eat more.

“Order up,” Tim says, leaving Damian’s omelet on the counter above where the boy is hiding and carrying the plate with his own breakfast with him to his office.

When he returns to the kitchen for his forgotten cup of coffee fifteen minutes later, there’s only a dirty plate sitting on the counter and Damian has moved on from the cabinet. Tim returns to his office and glances up at the vent above his bookshelf. “There are no servants in this house. Wash your own dishes.” 

He hears a faint “tt” but Damian offers no other reply.

Tim spends the rest of the morning responding to emails from Wayne Enterprises with periodic breaks for mindless browsing of the internet. W.E. has been nothing but one headache after another since Tim had taken over as CEO. 

There were certain parties on the board of directors who believed that, as an omega, Tim was unfit for his position. They questioned his every move. It helped that Lucius Fox seemed to be the one making most of the decisions, but even Lucius’ input was being questioned since he made no arguments against having an omega in charge. 

Almost every email in Tim’s inbox is from someone disliking decisions he’s made and implying that he’s too emotional/hormonal to see things clearly. Tim has gotten quite good at putting his foot down and asserting his authority in a way that garnered him the deserved respect of his position.

He’s forty-five minutes into a wikipedia spiral (that’s procrastination for responding to yet another email from yet another knot head alpha who that felt hinting at their ability to fuck Tim’s head on straight would get him to agree to their bullshit business proposal) when a protein bar hits him in the back of the head. 

A glance at the time says he’s missed lunch. 

“Thanks,” Tim says, unwrapping the protein bar and stuffing it in his mouth as he gets up and wanders towards the kitchen to make an actual meal. Trying to gain weight means having to actually eat three full meals a day and periodic snacking. Considering Tim’s penchant for going days on only coffee and peanut butter, this is harder than it sounds. 

He tries to tell himself that it’ll be worth it in the end, but he’s still not exactly sure about that.

Damian actually comes out of hiding when Tim dishes out grilled cheese sandwiches and tomato soup. He stands across the island from Tim, silently eating his share while watching Tim intently. Tim spares him a single glance between answering another email on his cell phone with one hand and holding a sandwich to his mouth to nibble on with the other.

This is the longest they’ve ever managed to be civil to each other. Probably because Damian hasn’t spoken a word yet. Maybe he’s finally learned to not to say anything at all when he has nothing nice to say? 

Damian tails Tim back to his office, but Tim is done with official work for the day. The entrance to Tim’s secret nest is accessed by a PIN typed into what looked to be a broken calculator on his desk. (The number is the date that Tim first figured out Batman’s secret identity.) The wall panel slides open revealing the hidden staircase, and Tim steps aside to let Damian go up first.

The Nest in his apartment isn’t on the same level as the Bat Cave, it isn’t even as good as Red Robin’s official Perch, but it’s good enough for night-to-night use when there’s nothing big going down. Damian looks unimpressed, but thankfully refrains from making disparaging comments. Tim is actually beginning to be a little worried about the boy’s continued silence.

Tim throws himself into his computer chair, which is like a million times comfier than the desk chair in his office, and immediately gets to work reviewing the information that had been compiling all day. There’d been a string of break-ins at pharmaceutical companies in Gotham that were strangely familiar and ringing all the wrong bells. 

If Tim could predict the criminal’s next step, he imagined it would save a lot of people a lot of heartache, and maybe it would finally allow him to bury the past. 

“Father was working on this, too,” Damian says, leaning over Tim’s shoulder to get a better look at the computer screen.

Tim’s unsurprised by that information, but… “Did he send you to keep me out of it? Is that why you’ve been following me? Because if so, you can march right back to the cave and tell him that I have as much right as he does to investigate this.”

“Tt. As if I’d ever agree to babysitting you.”

Tim purses his lips to keep from demanding to know why the kid was here then.

“It doesn’t look too serious,” Damian muses, “why would father want you to stay out of it?”

Tim bites his cheek as he considers telling Damian that truth. On the one hand, this case feels too personal to share with anyone other than Bruce, especially not with someone who hated Tim on a good day and would use any fuel to cut him down. 

On the other hand, Damian hadn’t been unpleasant to him the whole day, so maybe they were finally making some progress in breaking through their antagonism. And, if this case ended the way Tim thought it would, Damian would actually be of help since he hadn’t presented his secondary gender yet.

Tim frowns. Damian would most likely going to present as an alpha. Considering Bruce and Talia are both alphas and the likelihood of a non-omega to have an omega child is statistically low. There’s a chance he could be a beta, but Tim wouldn’t bet on it. Tim _would_ bet on the Wayne Enterprises Board of Directors trying to usurp Tim’s position and make Damian CEO as soon as the kid turned sixteen. They’d been over the moon seeing him hanging around the office this past week. They’d even tried to get him to team up with them against Tim. Damian, surprisingly, hadn’t jumped at the chance put Tim down in front of an audience, had instead just sat back in his chair and continued to glare. 

Tim turns his attention back to his computer screen. If the drug composition was the same as the one used five years ago, there was one more ingredient needed. An ingredient that none of the pharmaceutical companies in Gotham had in stock at the moment. But Wayne Medical Labs had just ordered some to be delivered later that week. Bruce was setting a trap, but it wouldn’t be sprung for a few days yet.

“It doesn’t matter right now,” Tim finally answers Damian. “Bruce will probably tell you about it sooner or later.” He closes out the files on his computer and turns to face Damian. “Do you want to spar before dinner?”

Damian watches him with an unreadable expression for a moment, then nods. “I would like that, stepmother.” 

The only indication of Tim’s surprise is slight widening of his eyes. 

Legally, yes, he is Damian’s step-parent, but he’d thought there was an unspoken agreement not to mention it. But it seemed he was wrong. Tim had tried to avoid thinking of Damian as even “Bruce’s son,” he’d never once thought of him as “my stepson” and he’d thought it’d gone both ways.

There was a certain way Damian called Bruce “father.” The word was infused with pride and respect. Damian respected Batman’s abilities and mission. He was proud to call Bruce his father. The tone in which he called Dick “Grayson” was similar. But the tone in which “Drake” was spat usually dripped derision and scorn.

There’s no derision in the way Damian says “stepmother.” There’s no pride either, but the respect is there.

Tim frowns and sits back in his chair. The question raises itself in his mind again and this time he doesn’t stop himself from asking,  “Damian, why are you here?”

The kid sighs. “Father and Grayson had a disagreement over my being made Robin. They do not know I overheard, but they were not exactly quiet about it. I decided it would be best if I did not hang around the manor while tempers were flaring thus.”

“But why come here? You hate me.”

“That is an exaggeration.”

Tim arches a single eyebrow.

“It is true that you are not my favorite person, but I would not call this hate. You are not entirely unlikable. You are reasonable intelligent. You are decent at both your day and night jobs. Father and Grayson value your input and consider you to be an important asset and member of the family. You have even managed to gain the respect of my grandfather. So, clearly, there is more to you than previously believed.”

“And that is why you are here? To learn just what ‘more to me’ is?”

“In part,” Damian agrees with a casual shrug.

“And the other reason?”

The look in Damian’s eyes is hard, but not quite a glare. “Begging your pardon, stepmother, but I think I’ll keep that part to myself a while longer.”

Tim frowns, but accepts the answer. Nothing would come from pressing him, after all. In fact, if he tried to force a real answer out of Damian, he’d probably lose what little respect the kid had for him.

“Alright. Let’s get to sparring then.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So I've officially unabandoned this series, but updates will be slow coming.


End file.
